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REVELL P-47 D "Bubbletop"


Chris/Germany

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ok, here is the starboard wing in progress: flaps removed ( will be replaced by " one-piece-alu flaps...hehe..great trick), the cutaway whole on upper wing-half milled out ( after two beers.....), most of lower wing half construction done with adding the ribs of plywood, they'll get a little sanding now, then they will get "silvered" ( spray-can), then the guns and ammo belts will be added....
enjoy

post-4-1082678020.jpg

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Sorry for that Chris, but that's for two reasons:
1st: I need a solid construction where I can fix and lead the voltage wires through, as you may know they are going through the landing gears ( right now I'm working with two separate voltage cirquits, one for the motor, one for the lights and each one has two wires for + and - going through the gear to be connected inside the fuselage) and therefore I'm thankful for a solid construction and I think the Jugs wheelwells are not a bad as some others
2nd: I'm a lazy modeller, not really a specialist in super-detailing wheel-wells 'cause normally you cant look at them except you're a leprechaun doing some service......shame on me......

anyway they will get some wiring......
dont shoot at me for that...please....

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No shooting, just have to let the Leprechauns know they can't go near this one :)

 

Rutman's wheel wells are excelent for this bird, and they actually increase the wing stiffness over the kit's wells. But they are a pain to fit, ans scratch-building the Jugs bays isn't a one nighter either!! ;)

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here's the starboard wing filled and ready to be mated with the fuselage: stringers ( small stripes of plastic sheet) and ammo belts ( selfmade resin copies) will be painted later to prevent them from sanding dust and scratches.

post-4-1083014031.jpg

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Here the wings and the fuselage are "married", this is a shot of the underside to make the electrical wires visible. All wires - tail light, position lights, wires for motor and also the main wires through ( or from) the landing gear for voltage connection - meet through a whole in the fuselage, will be connected and then fed into the fuselage, the remaining whole will be filled with a small piece of a sponge and then "puttied". Also notice the filled areas in the wings where the landing flaps will be mounted, only a piece of plywood as a basic shape.

post-4-1083016429.jpg

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Thanx Carl!
The tubings I use for the landing gears ( and MGs , instrument bezels and much more other parts) can normally be found in a good sorted RC- modellers store, the diameters.....hm....from the smallest one I can get to some with maybe 5 mm inner diameter. Maybe they're not 100% exactly in right scale then, but most important thing - my two cents - is that maybe four or five of them fit perfectly into each other, to give the smallest one ( where the wheel is fitted) more strengh also a brass wire can be inserted. Normally I prefer Aluminium 'cause they are very, very easy to handle, can be cutted with a sharp knive, sanded, bend into right shape and fixed with a drop of super glue, but I've they are not available brass tubings will also work, they are only a little harder to cut. Notice pic 2 and 3 on page two of the online build, there you can see some tubings fitting beautyful into each other and also a gear I did before this build started, used a brass tubing for the outer piece 'cause I did not have a right one in alu. Again, if it's not absolutely in scale for the right diameter it is no problem for me 'cause I'm not a rivet counter, main thing is that it looks like the real one and it is, that's best, much more stronger then those plastic parts. little story here?
Prepared one of the 190s of the "Sachsenberg Schwarm" for a photo, put it on a table and had a massive piece of wood, covered with fabric, as a background, and on the way to the camera the wooden piece felt on to the plane.....nice sound.....after the first shock I realized that the only thing that happen was....the landing gear-legs were bend like they would have been retracted ( but not broken!) and all I had to do was bring them back in right position.....I'm sure if this had happend with a plastic gear there would have been only some scrapped parts! Hope this helps

cheers
Chris

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Hello Chris

You mention the 'hot metal' method for putting the acccess panels on the wings/fuselage

 

Can (or have you already) described this?

 

Beautifully worked kit, I look for updates everytime I visit

 

'Father T'

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Thanx "Father", the "hot-metal-technic" will be exactly described in a 4-part article that will follow the online build as soon as she's finished and I have brought all pics of the built in a logical sequence. This first: the panels are applied first with only a tiny drop of superglue, then "heatened" with the tip of a soldering iron to make them sink a little bit into the plastic, then they are removed to clean the bulges of each sinkmark and then they are applied again and carefully sanded to break the edges........a little bit more difficult than in this short description ( be careful with this hot soldering iron!) but all in all no "witchcraft" , hope this helps `till the article is online ,
Cheers

Chris

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well mates, after the connection of all electrical wires is done and a test showed that all lights and the prop is working I closed that whole at the underside of the fuselage and did some filling . While the filler is drying I started with the biggest challenge of the Revell Jug: landing flaps down! this is my latest trick and I think it's a totally new kind of using exotic materials in plastic modelling so here a little more description. technical instruction first?
ok, normally you cut the flaps of a kit and glue them with the right angle to their place again ( so for example at a FW 190) With the Jugs flaps this don't work 'cause this flaps are like a wing itself and they move under the wings upper panels into in and out position. Following pic shows my first try at one of my first Jugs and here I realized.....this won't work: the lower part of the flap seems ok but the upper part is much to short, it should be nearly as long as the lower part and at the inner end formed like a wing with a real aerodynamic profile.....

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I tried to fill the missing area with a massive piece of balsa, filled and sanded the whole thing and finally painted it and it looked ok....but only a few days later I noticed a small gap at the border of the plastic and the wood...this resulted from temperature differences and the work started again. then I filled it again with balsa and covered the upper side with aluminium, looked also ok but I was not really satisfied, three materials in such a small piece - aluminium on the upper side, plastic on the underside and balsa and filler at the end to give it the right shape?Hm........and then the glorious light from above hit me.....why not make the whole flap of one piece of.......aluminium? it's so easy.......when you know how to do it wink.gif
Ok, I cut a piece of alu to the right size end bended it carefully with the fingers over the stick of a brush, looking to get the right form of this little "wing" by following the sticks shape - thicker at the inner side where the flap meets the fuselage, thinner at the outside - and trying to get a good looking rounded end where it should fit under the wing. Only two or three trys and it worked....

post-4-1083104309.jpg

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then the flaps ends are glued together with a 2-K epoxy glue while fixin them like in the pic. The epoxy is a must 'cause the flaps halfs have a little tension and we dont want to opem themselves after a while!

post-4-1083106134.jpg

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